The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation [excerpt]

History of European Jewry, roots of anti-Semitism

Below is an excerpt from The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon, a leader of the communist movement who was active in underground factory committees in Belgium during the Nazi occupation. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and died later that year in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz at the age of 26. Copyright © 1970 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted with permission.



BY ABRAM LEON

1. Precapitalist period
This was also the period of the greatest prosperity of the Jews. Commercial and usurious “capital” found great possibilities for expansion in feudal society. The Jews were protected by the kings and princes, and their relations with other classes were in general good.

This situation lasted up to the eleventh century in Western Europe. …

Feudal economy continued to dominate Eastern Europe till the end of the eighteenth century. And the center of Jewish life shifted more and more to that area.

2. Period of medieval capitalism
From the eleventh century on, Western Europe entered a period of intensive economic development. The first stage of this evolution was characterized by the creation of a corporative industry and a native merchant bourgeoisie. The penetration of mercantile economy into the agricultural domain determined the second stage.

The growth of cities and of a native merchant class brought with it the complete elimination of the Jews from commerce. They became usurers whose principal clientele consisted of the nobility and the kings. But the mercantile transformation of agricultural economy resulted in undermining these positions as well.

The relative abundance of money enabled the nobility to throw off the yoke of the usurer. The Jews were driven from one country after another. Others became assimilated, being absorbed mainly by the native bourgeoisie. …

In general, the period of medieval capitalism was that of the most violent Jewish persecutions. Jewish “capital” came into conflict with all classes of society. …

Medieval capitalism was practically unknown in Eastern Europe. There was no separation between merchants capital and usurious capital. … Whereas the Jews were progressively eliminated from the countries of the West, they constantly strengthened their position in Eastern Europe. It was only in the nineteenth century that the development of capitalism (it is no longer corporative capitalism this time, but modern capitalism, which appears on the scene) began to undermine the prosperous condition of the Russian and Polish Jews. …

3. Period of manufacture and industrial capitalism
To the extent that the Jews survived in Western Europe—and only a few were left there—they took part in the development of capitalism. … Precisely because the Jews represented a primitive capitalism (mercantile and usurious), the development of modern capitalism could only prove fatal to their social position.

This fact does not at all exclude—far from it—the individual participation of the Jews in the creation of modern capitalism. But wherever the Jews were integrated into the capitalist class, there they were likewise assimilated. …

If Judaism did not completely disappear in the West, it was owing to the mass influx of Jews from Eastern Europe. The Jewish question, which is now posed on a world scale, therefore results primarily from the situation of Eastern Judaism. …

While the disequilibrium between the crumbling of feudalism and the development of capitalism was disappearing in Western Europe, it was growing worse in the backward Eastern European countries. The destruction of feudal economy and primitive forms of capitalism proceeded there much more rapidly than the development of modern capitalism. Increasingly greater masses of peasants and artisans had to seek their road of salvation in emigration. …

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Jewish masses sought new roads of immigration. But at first it was toward the interior of Russia and Germany that they headed. The Jews succeeded in penetrating the great industrial and commercial centers where they played an important role as merchants and industrialists. Here we come upon a new and important fact: For the first time in centuries a Jewish proletariat was born. …

The Jewish proletariat, however, remained concentrated mainly in the sector of consumer goods industry. It was primarily of the artisan type. In the same measure as large-scale industry expanded its field of exploitation, the artisan branches of economy declined. The workshop was superseded by the factory. … Jewish masses streamed in ever larger numbers from Eastern Europe to the West and to America. The solution of the Jewish question, that is to say, the complete absorption of the Jews into economic life, thus became a world problem.

4. The decline of capitalism
By socially differentiating Judaism, by integrating the latter into economic life, and by emigration, capitalism has laid the bases for the solution of the Jewish problem. But capitalism has failed to solve it. On the contrary, the fearsome crisis of the capitalist regime in the twentieth century has aggravated the plight of the Jews to an unparalleled degree. …

Everywhere is rife the savage anti-Semitism of the middle classes, who are being choked to death under the weight of capitalist contradictions. Big capital exploits this elemental anti-Semitism of the petty bourgeoisie in order to mobilize the masses around the banner of racism. The Jews are being strangled between the jaws of two systems; feudalism and capitalism, each feeding the rottenness of the other. 

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